


A Ghost in the Machine

by Innwich



Category: Overwatch (Video Game), Westworld (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Westworld Fusion, M/M, Season 1 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-17 09:38:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14186100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innwich/pseuds/Innwich
Summary: Jack got back in his tractor and drove home. The corn would be ready for harvest in the fall if the weather remained favorable.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains major spoilers for season one of _Westworld_. If you haven’t watched the TV show, go watch it first. Everyone deserves to experience _Westworld_ unspoilt.

Jack got back in his tractor and drove home. The corn would be ready for harvest in the fall if the weather remained favorable.

The last month had been uncomfortably warm after the heat wave had passed, but Dad had caught a cough that had been keeping him up at night. Mom was talking about getting the town doctor to come for a house call in case it was a chest infection, while Dad insisted that the cough would go away on its own. Dad grudgingly agreed to substitute his greasy bacon-and-sausage breakfast with leftover chicken soup even though he complained the weather was too warm for soups.

When Jack returned from the cornfields, Dad and Mom were out in the pigpen tending to the pigs. After the war had broken out, Dad had downsized the farm and dismissed the farmhands. These days, it was just the three of them living on the farm. The house was too empty for Jack to want to stay cooped up inside for long.

Jack saddled the old gray mare, and rode out to the woods behind the farm.

There was a stream that split from the river at the outskirts of the nearby town and flowed through the woods. The running water drew out wild animals that inhabited the woods. It wasn’t uncommon to catch deer and foxes drinking from the stream. Jack let the old mare grazed once they had reached the meadow that Jack had come to think of as his own. The old mare had been bought off a rancher the year before Jack had been born. She had worked on the farm for as long as Jack had lived, and now time for her to be put out to pasture.

“Take it easy on her.” Dad had patted Jack on the back before heading out to the chicken coop. “And yourself too. I’m proud of you.”

Jack sat under a tree. The sun was warm on his skin. The gurgling of the stream was lulling him to sleep Jack was dozing when he jolted awake to rustling in the bushes.

“I’ve neutralized the target. The sensors are detecting other movements in the area.” A dark-skinned man emerged around the bend of the stream ten feet away. “Stand by. I have visual.”

The man’s cheeks were marked by scars that hadn’t healed properly. His goatee was carefully trimmed and better taken care of than his clothes. Jack recognized trouble in his scratched black hat, dusty coat and worn boots. Then the man cocked his shotgun.

Jack scrambled to his feet. The rocks on the bank cut his palms open. These woods were quiet, but bandits had been passing through the towns nearby. A family had been killed in a shootout between a gang and the sheriff’s deputies. The bounties put out on the gangs were attracting bounty hunters that were no less dangerous than the bandits.

“Freeze all motor functions,” the man said.

“You’re making a mistake,” Jack said. The shotgun pointing at his face was making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. He hadn’t been on the wrong side of a gun since he had been discharged. “Get that gun out of my face or I’ll shove it down your throat.”

“It’s another one. Failure to respond to voice commands.” The man didn’t lower his shotgun. “I can use the target practice.”

Jack balled his hands into fists. In the war, he had imagined the way many ways he could die when he had seen soldiers be wounded and killed in action every day. He had never once thought he would be killed by an armed thug not more than five miles away from the farm that he had grown up on.

Jack was too focused on staring down the armed hostile to realize someone was standing behind him.

“Stand down, soldier.”

Jack woke up to the sun in his eyes. The old mare was nudging at his boots. She was trying to reach a pine cone that had dropped next to his feet. Jack picked up the pine cone and let her have it. She sniffed at it, before she huffed in disinterest, blowing hot wet air over Jack’s hand, and wandered down to the stream.

Jack lay down in the grass again. He preferred to stay out here for a little longer. These woods were quiet, but Jack didn’t need a lot to entertain himself. Idly, he picked at the itching scratches on his palms. He must have cut himself on the rocks in the dirt when he had been napping.

  


* * *

  


“What does victory taste like, Jack?”

  


* * *

  


“Earth to Jack,” Ana said.

The jeep drove over a ditch. Jack would have cracked his skull on the cabin’s ceiling if he weren’t wearing his seatbelt.

“You’re looking parched. I shouldn’t need to tell you to stay hydrated,” Ana said from the driver’s seat.

The trees on the sides of the road were scorched. The fire from the battle months ago had left its mark here. Parts of the road were blocked by mudslides. They had to stop every now and then to clear the road before they could keep moving. The motley convoy of jeeps and bikes were travelling in a single file to avoid driving off the road.

“I didn’t get much sleep last night,” Jack said. “I was thinking about the farm back home. In this weather, the corn would be ready for harvest in the fall.”

“You should apply for a furlough when we get back. You’ve earned it. It’s been, what? A year since you’ve taken a break?” Ana said.

“Two years since I’ve gone back to the States. Dad has been sending me pictures of the farm, but it just isn’t the same,” Jack said. “How did you do it, Ana? Being away from home for so long?”

“Fareeha is my home. She is always with me in the field. I keep her here,” Ana said, tapping her chest, “so I don’t stray far.”

“It’ll be good to see Fareeha again when we’re done here,” Jack said. He glanced out of his window. A team of their newest recruits were driving the jeep behind them. He didn’t even know their names. “Think we can shut down the omnium with these recruits? Some of them are greener than my thumb.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on you,” Ana said.

Neither of them saw the truck coming.

The truck careened down the side of the hill and rammed into their jeep. It knocked their jeep off the road.

Jack couldn’t tell up from down or right from left. He was tossed like a ragdoll, as the jeep rolled down the hill rapidly. His seatbelt was cutting into the exposed skin of his neck. He was slammed into his seat each time the jeep crashed into trees that barely slowed the descent. His world was spinning, punctuated by sudden stops and drops that were breaking his bones.

Finally, the jeep shuddered with another impact, and then it stopped.

Jack couldn’t make himself move. He was strapped to his seat by his seatbelt. His chest and back were aching. His teeth were rattling in his head. It felt like he was still falling even though he wasn’t moving. He was lying in a pile of scrap that didn’t resemble a jeep anymore. The windows were shattered and the chassis was distorted.

Next to him, Ana’s body was draped over the steering wheel. Airbags were deployed, shielding her from Jack’s view. Jack couldn’t see how bad she was wounded.

“Ana,” Jack croaked.

Ana’s hands twitched.

“Ana.”

This was an ambush. The enemies knew they were coming.

It was the last thought Jack had before the truck landed on the jeep and crushed him and Ana.


	2. Chapter 2

Jack got back in his tractor and drove home. The corn would be ready for harvest in the fall if the weather remained favorable.

When Jack returned from the cornfields, Dad and Mom were out in the pigpen tending to the pigs. After the war had broken out, Dad had downsized the farm and dismissed the farmhands. These days, it was just the three of them living on the farm. The house was too empty for Jack to want to stay cooped up inside for long.

Jack saddled the old gray mare, and rode out to the woods behind the farm.

The old mare knew her way around the woods. Jack didn’t have to tell her where to go. He let her set the pace as she followed the stream to the meadow that Jack had come to think of as his. Jack dismounted and patted her neck as she went to drink from the stream.

“He needs to hide them better if he wants to keep them off the grid,” a man said.

“Is that him?” a woman said. “Mmm. You’re right. He’s good-looking.”

Travellers often came through the woods. They would be fine as long as they didn’t wander off too far from the stream. Jack pointed them back to the town if they were lost. However, the man and the woman standing further downstream were more interested in their tablets than the woods. The woman was wearing skinny jeans and a short jacket with a high collar. The left side of her head was shaved and the tip of her hair was dyed in purple. She was a petite figure next to the broad frame of the man, who was dressed in a black hat and a black coat that were too warm for the weather.

“We’re here to track the signal. Leave the gawking to the guests,” the man said.

“How can you not stare? The details in this place are amazing,” the woman said.

“Don’t get used to it. We only come up here when it’s necessary. Minimal interference with the hosts and guests. It ruins the immersion,” the man said, “or so the alcoholic hacks in Narrative told me.”

“We’re chasing a ghost,” the woman said, waving her hand in dismissal. “It’ll be gone by the time we find where the disruption originated.”

“Like I said, there is no ghost in the system,” the man said. “Someone is sabotaging our operations.”

“The EMP doesn’t explain why the hosts in town are hearing voices,” the woman said, typing on her tablet. “Maybe it’s something in the water.”

“Right.”

The woman put her hands up in mock surrender. “Don’t shoot the messenger. It’s what Q&A are saying.”

The man scoffed. “Morrison would like that. It’s the water, not him and his useless updates that are making us put in overtime to roll the hosts back.”

  


* * *

  


The warm breath in his ear. “What does victory taste like, Jack?”

  


* * *

  


Jack had arrived with the convoy of jeeps under the cover of the night, but the locals had known they were coming. The locals had waved at them when they had driven by on the streets. By the time they reached the airfield just outside the city, Reinhardt’s and Torbjörn’s teams had already set up camp.

Out here, the only shops within walking distance were a bar and a gas station. The surrounding land was so flat that any incoming attack could be spotted from miles away, which was why Jack was already waiting by his jeep when a convoy of trucks drove into the airfield.

Gabriel jumped out of his truck before it fully stopped. “Jack.”

“Gabriel,” Jack said. “You’re late.”

“We ran into an ambush on our way here,” Gabriel said as his recruits disembarked from their trucks. The sides of the trucks were punctured with bullet holes. A recruit was carried on a stretcher by two medics who were heading for the medical station.

“The omnium knows we’re here?” Jack frowned.

“No, it’s Null Sector,” Gabriel said. “They know about the omnium. They want it too.”

“That’s not in the briefing,” Jack said. Recruits in the support units were unloading supplies from the trucks. At the edge of the airfield, Ana was ordering her teams to spread out the jeeps in a defensive perimeter. Jack didn’t recognize most of the recruits that he would be commanding. “I’m liking this less and less,”

“You and me both,” Gabriel said, climbing into Jack’s jeep. “Walk me through the plan.”

The jeep was tight on space. Weapons and supplies were stuffed into the sides and back of the seats. Jack moved boxes of tool sets and ammo to the floor so he could clear out space in the back to spread out a map. Holographic maps were useless in the field where radios were already eating up more batteries than they could spare.

Eichenwalde was a historical town that had once had a thriving populating that had lived there for generations. However, the residents had been evacuated during an airstrike in the Omnic Crisis. The town was taken over by omnic forces. Toxic gases had been deployed during the attack. The level of poison left in the town was deemed too high for safe human inhabitation, so the people never returned. Homes and businesses were left as they had been on the day of the airstrike.

The target was an omnium that had been thought to have been destroyed by the Polish military back in the Crisis. Last week, the omnium had reactivated itself, and escaped into a military dropship.

“It landed in Eichenwalde before the dropship ran out of fuel,” Jack said. “Eichenwalde is abandoned, but there are people living in a town nearby.”

“Why hasn’t the town been evacuated?” Gabriel said.

“They refused to leave when the evacuation alert was sent out. Those people have lived through the Omnic Crisis in the middle of an active warzone. Anyone that can’t stand the heat has left years ago,” Jack said.

“They better not get in the way,” Gabriel said. “What should we be expecting in Eichenwalde? Drones and OR14s and Bastion units?”

“Expect heavy resistance. The omnium could be reactivating the destroyed combat units that had been left there in the Crisis,” Jack said. “We have to move fast before it builds a whole army from scrap parts.”

“Eichenwalde is deep in the forest.” Gabriel examined the map. “I don’t see roads. We’ll have to go on foot if we want to beat Null Sector to the omnium.”

“Nothing we haven’t done before,” Jack said. “You want to take point?”

“As if you have someone else lined up for the job. I’ll brief my men,” Gabriel said.

“I can always ask Reinhardt.” Jack pulled out a stack of maps from under the seats. He flipped through the maps to make sure he had the right ones. The most updated maps he had of the forest were published a decade ago. The teams would rely heavily on Gabriel’s recon units to map out the area.

“He would like that,” Gabriel said, taking the maps from Jack. “He would also get all of us killed. At least wait till he pays me the ninety bucks and one drink he owes me.”

“He has to pay me back first. He has a shit poker face; it’s worse than yours,” Jack said, as he packed away his map.

“Go eat a dick, Jack. My poker face made McCree piss himself in a holding cell back then,” Gabriel said.

“That’s what I was saying. Have you seen your face when you’re about to lose a game? Plus, McCree was a punk when you recruited him. Still is,” Jack said.

When they came out of the jeep, crates of burgers and pizzas and soft drinks were being passed out to the recruits. The owner of the bar down the road was chatting with Reinhardt in German with animated hand gestures. Recruits were milling around in groups and bullshitting over their dinner. Fast food was an effective social lubricant for people that were young enough to not have to worry about their cholesterol level.

“Watching these recruits make me feel old,” Jack said. “They’re having the time of their life, and here I’m thinking of the farm back home.”

“You still planning on applying for furlough?” Gabriel said.

“I’ll put in my application after we’re done here. It’s been two years since I’ve gone back to the States. Dad has been sending me pictures of the farm, but it just ain’t the same,” Jack said.

“Then you better get a room prepared for me too on that farm,” Gabriel said, already walking back to his teams with the maps tucked under arm. “McCree, put down your gun and take the bottles off the fence, unless you want to spend the night gluing the bottles back together.”


	3. Chapter 3

Jack got back in his tractor and drove home. The corn would be ready for harvest in the fall if the weather remained favorable.

When Jack returned from the cornfields, Dad and Mom were out in the pigpen tending to the pigs. After the war had broken out, Dad had downsized the farm and dismissed the farmhands. These days, it was just the three of them living on the farm. The house was too empty for Jack to want to stay cooped up inside for long.

Jack saddled the old gray mare, and rode out to the woods behind the farm.

It was noon when Jack woke up under a tree with the sun in his eyes. The old mare was nudging at his boots. And then Jack saw them. Two human bodies were floating down the stream.

The current was weak so the bodies were drifting slowly downstream towards Jack. Jack dragged a body out of the water, before he waded back into the stream for the other body. He grunted as he pulled the two bodies further up the bank so that they were clear of the waterline. The bodies were heavier than they looked, weighed down by the layers of soaked clothes they were wearing.

Jack sat down and panted. His jeans were wet and sticking to his legs. He would be shivering if he wasn’t out in the sun. _Leave no man behind._ It was a motto that had stayed with Jack after his time in the army. If he had died in the war, he would have wanted someone to bring his body back to his family.

Regaining his breath, Jack checked the bodies that he had fished out of the stream. The first body was lying on its belly. Jack rolled the body onto its back, and grimaced at the sight that greeted him. The dead man stared sightlessly at the sky. Water was leaking out of his lax mouth. His skin was sheet white, but he hadn’t been in the water for long enough to become bloated. The bullet hole in his forehead was still bleeding. The gun holster at his hips was empty. The man might have been part of the gangs in town.

Jack looked for identification documents in the dead man’s pockets. In the breast pocket of the man’s leather jacket, there was a folded piece of paper.

Jack was startled when the other body behind him coughed wetly.

The man was alive, even though he was as pale as the dead man lying in the dirt. A red serape was wrapped around his shoulders. He had a cybernetic left arm, but that was not the most remarkable thing about him. Jack’s gaze was drawn to the vivid ring of rope burns around the man’s neck.

“Take it easy. You’re safe now,” Jack said.

The man coughed. His hat had fallen off his shaggy hair and was bouncing on his back

“Are you wounded?” Jack said.

The man pointed at the bruise around his neck and said hoarsely, “Hanged. The drop didn’t break my neck.”

“Can you walk?” Jack said.

“I ain’t going back to the town,” the man said.

“The town is too far. I’m bringing you home. You need to rest,” Jack said.

Jack put an arm around the man’s back and heaved him to his feet. The man staggered like a newborn foal learning to walk. Jack was taking most of his weight as he steered the man to the old mare. It would’ve been easier to pick up and carry the man if he weren’t as tall as Jack.

“Work with me. You ain’t dying yet,” Jack said.

The old mare stomped her feet anxiously when the man collapsed against her. Jack had to whisper sweet nothings to comfort her, and then pushed the man onto her back. The man wasn’t much help; he was swaying in the saddle like he would fall any second. Jack climbed onto the old mare behind the man, grabbed the reins, and headed off for the farm.

He would come back for the body later. The dead weren’t going anywhere.

Mom and Dad were still tending to the pigs. Jack half-carried and half-dragged the man up the stairs to the unused guestroom next to his own room, and dumped him on the bed. The man groaned and rolled onto his side.

“You should change out of those clothes. You’ll catch your death if you don’t let your clothes dry,” Jacks said. “I’ll get you some food.”

When Jack returned to the room, the man was sleeping under the covers. He had laid his clothes out to dry at the foot of the bed. Jack left a plate of cracker and a glass of water on the bedside table.

“Do I know you from somewhere, partner?” the man said without opening his eyes.

“No. Think I’d remember a man with a robot arm,” Jack said.

“From a dream, maybe,” the man muttered.

Jack let the man rest. Jack would have to explain the situation to Dad and Mom when they came home from the pigpen. He went back to his own room and stripped out of his wet clothes.

A piece of folded paper fell out of his pocket. It was the piece of paper Jack took from the dead man. Jack dried the paper with a hairdryer, and then he unfolded the paper carefully.

It was a wanted poster. The paper had wrinkled from its time in the water, but the words were still legible. At the top of the poster, the title said: _Wanted. Dead or Alive_. Under the title was a picture of the man that Jack had put in the bed in the room next door, and the caption, _Jesse McCree. $60,000,000 Reward._

  


* * *

  


To Jack, they might as well be in another county. He could only feel the warm breath in his ear. “What does victory taste like, Jack?”

  


* * *

  


Jack was in a dream.

He was sitting on a metal stool in a room where the walls were made out of glass. Beyond the room, there were rows after rows of rooms with the same glass walls and the same metal stools. The florescent lighting in the ceiling was so strong that it left no shadows on the sterile white floor.

He had been in this dream before.

“Starting log entry #2271,” Jack said without emotions.

His hard blue eyes stared into Jack’s. “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes,” Jack said. “You are me.”

“Analysis.”

The cogs in Jack’s head turned. Jack trained his eyes on the glass wall to his right as he entered analysis mode.

“Tell me about Lena Oxton,” Jack Morrison said.

“She had an accident,” Jack said.

”Ever get that feeling of déjà vu?” Oxton said from next to Jack, as they crouched low in an alley.

Sections of the streets in King’s Row were blocked by debris. Scorch marks were burnt into the exterior of buildings. Shops had been looted and gutted. The traffic lights weren’t working anymore. The only vehicles on the road were burnt wreckages.

London was just another city to the rest of the strike teams, but it was home for Oxton. It couldn’t be easy for her to see her hometown being torn apart by the war.

“That is war for you.” Jack counted the shots peppering the wall that they were crouching behind. Five, four, three, two, one. Silence. Enemy was reloading. Jack said, “Cover me.”

“I’ve got your six, sir!” Oxton said.

Oxton provided rapid covering fire when Jack ducked out of cover to throw a pulse grenade into the garden that the Null Sector insurgents were hiding. There were panicked screams before a wave of light exploded in the garden.

“Good job.” Jack stood up. He read the alert blinking in the upper corner of his visor. “We’re two miles from the rendezvous point. Let’s get a move on.”

“Sir, can I say something?” Oxton said quietly. The tone of her voice made Jack tear his attention from the intel popping up on his visor. It wasn’t like Oxton to drag her feet. She was one of the few people that could keep up with Jack’s enhanced speed.

“What is it?” Jack said.

“I’ve had strange dreams. I’ve visited places I don’t know. I’ve met people I’ve forgotten,” Oxton said, hanging her head. Her usual bubbly enthusiasm was replaced by a sobriety that Jack had never seen from her before. “I don’t think I came back right after the Slipstream.”

Combat fatigue affected the most hardened soldiers on the field. Jack wasn’t sure what was going on with Oxton, but he could be the commanding officer that she needed. He crouched in front of Oxton so he could meet her gaze. “What do you mean, the Slipstream?”

Oxton raised her head. Her round brown eyes were glassy under her blue goggles. ”Ever get that feeling of déjà vu?”

“Freeze all motor functions,” a new voice said from the shadows. Jack stopped breathing. He stopped blinking. His joints locked in place. Oxton was frozen like Jack. The voice continued, “Tell them I’ve found the bug.”


End file.
